A Preliminary Evaluation of the Determinants of Certification Success in MOOCs: A Multi-level Study

In this paper, we investigate the determinants of certification success in massive open online courses (MOOCs) using multi-level modeling. Our model includes individual student level characteristics as well as country-level infrastructure, economy and culture-related variables. In our complete model, which contains both developing and developed countries, we observe that two country-level variables; internet bandwidth and Hofstede’s uncertainty avoidance cultural dimension are positively associated with the probability of getting certified in MOOC environment. We also observe that age, gender, education level and the institution attended are significantly associated with the probability of getting certified in MOOC environment. Furthermore, our study reveals that the determinants of certification vary between developing and developed countries.